Way the Wind Blows, The

London: William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, 1976. BOOK: Spine Bumped; Light Shelf Rub to Boards; Spine Slightly Cocked; Edges Lightly Soiled; Slight Yellowing Due to Age. DUST JACKET: Previous Owner Markings (Price Clipped); Lightly Creased; Lightly Chipped; Light Moisture Damage (Staining); Heavy Yellowing Due to Age; In Archival Quality Jacket Cover. SUB-TITLE: An Autobiography. CONTENTS: Early days in the Borders; II School and University; III A beginning in politics and Parliament; IV Neville Chamberlain and the approach of war; V A declaration of faith; VI Time for thought; VII Scottish prelude to the commonwealth; VIII Africa; IX The diplomacy of Suez; X Foreign Secretary under Macmillan; XI The Soviet Union and the United Nations; XII The strategic scene; XIII The succession to the Premiership; XIV The office of Prime Minister; XV Scotland's government; XVI General Election 1964; resignation of party leadership; shadowing foreign affairs; XVII The Foreign Service; XVIII Once again at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; XIX China; XX 45 years of politics; Appendices; Index. SYNOPSIS: If any Prime Minister of the twentieth century could step straight into such a role in the political novels of Anthony Trollope it would be Lord Home. Yet no parallel could be more misleading. Under Queen Victoria the head of an ancient family in possession of great estates was a natural candidate for the Premiership: in the second half of the twentieth century such an appointment was widely held to be a political and constitutional impossibility. It is not the least of Lord Home's remarkable achievements to have bridged this gulf between two worlds at first sight so remote. The account he gives of his childhood and upbringing in the incomparably beautiful Border Country that is still his home, of the habits, tastes and interests he acquired ands till enjoys, describes a background that has altered little for the last two centuries. But the scenes and characters of his public life, Munich and the Abdication, Chamberlain and Hitler, Baldwin and Churchill, De Gaulle and Mr Gromyko, Khrushchev and Kennedy, Vietnam and Rhodesia, Menzies and Walter Nash, Harold Macmillan and Pandit Nehru, are right up against the footlights of our time. There is a characteristic lightness and sureness in the author's portrayal of them. Lord Home brings to the convulsions of this fevered age the serene realism of a man who has observed nature long and closely and who knows his own mind. If he was favoured in his birth and early opportunities, he has had his share of frustration and misfortune. Four years of prostration by a terrible disease at the very moment when the world was all before him were turned to advantage in self-discipline and self-education. The clarity of his perceptions was forcibly brought home to the Russians when, after much huffing and puffing, they had to repatriate several hundred agents carefully placed in the embassies and trade delegations of the Eastern Bloc. The charm and humour of his mind and personality, so amply attested by his colleagues and subordinates, shine through this most agreeable, unobvious and utterly unpretentious book.. First Edition 2nd Printing. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.